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42 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2018
to satisfy the customer. Understanding a cus-
tomer's needs goes far beyond product and
features;
it includes a variety of subjective
attributes such as service levels, key cus-
tomer satisfaction drivers, and the degree of
perceived value from your core business
activities.
Organizations spend a great deal of mon-
ey in time and resources on strategic planning
to develop the short- and long-term goals that
will guide the company going forward. It never
ceases to amaze me how often these goals and
plans are developed without any input from
the customer base. Most senior-level planning
sessions are bottom-line focused, with most
of the discussions being focused around rev-
enues, balance sheet results, head-count, fore-
cast, etc. Make no mistake: I fully appreciate
the need for a bottom-line mentality at the se-
nior management level, but equal time needs
to be granted for the underlying foundation
that directly affects these numbers: customer
satisfaction.
When the discussion does turn self-reflective,
questions like "What do we make?", "What
market are we in?" and "Who are our custom
-
ers?" are staples of American management
strategic planning sessions. Missing are ques-
tions like "How do our customers see us?",
"What products
and markets
do our custom-
ers want us to be in?", "What do our custom-
ers think we do well, and more importantly, not
do well?", and "What about our internal cus-
tomers?" These are the questions that need to be
not only answ
ered,
but acted upon on a regular
basis for an organization to be able to achieve
a quantum leap in their level of customer
satisfaction.
Sage Advice
Many companies tend to become complacent
over time, especially if they are at the top of
their game. I remember having a rather animat
-
ed conversation many years ago with my good
friend Will Rogers about the challenges of un-
derstanding and meeting customer needs. My
friend Will alw
ays
had a way of breaking down
a complicated situation into its most basic form,
and we were discussing the false sense of se
-
curity many companies have about how happy
they feel their customers
are. And in his typical,
plainspoken way, I think Will hit the nail on the
head when he told me, "Steve, if you're ridin'
ahead of the herd, look back every now and
then to make sure it's still there."
PCB007
Steve Williams is the president of
The Right Approach Consulting LLC.
To read past columns, or to contact
Williams, click here.
New graphene printing technology can pro-
duce electronic circuits that are low-cost, flex-
ible, highly conductive and water repellent.
The nanotechnology "would lend enormous
value to self-cleaning wearable/washable elec-
tronics, resistant to
stains, ice, and biofilm
formation," according
to a recently published
paper.
"We're taking low-cost, inkjet-printed gra-
phene and tuning it with a laser to make func-
tional materials," said Jonathan Claussen, an
Io
wa
State University assistant professor of
mechanical engineering, an associate of the
U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laborato
-
ry and the corresponding author of the paper
recently featured
on the cover of the journal
Nanoscale.
Flexible, Water-Repellent Graphene Circuits for Washable Electronics